25 Useful Basic Commands of APT-GET and APT-CACHE for Package Management

This article explains how quickly you can learn to install, remove, update and search software packages using apt-get and apt-cache commands from the command line. This article provides some useful commands that will help you to handle package management in Debian/Ubuntu based systems.

APT-GET and APT-CACHE Commands

What is apt-get?

The apt-get utility is a powerful and free package management command line program, that is used to work with Ubuntu’s APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) library to perform installation of new software packages, removing existing software packages, upgrading of existing software packages and even used to upgrading the entire operating system.

What is apt-cache?

The apt-cache command line tool is used for searching apt software package cache. In simple words, this tool is used to search software packages, collects information of packages and also used to search for what available packages are ready for installation on Debian or Ubuntu based systems.

APT-CACHE – 5 Useful Basic Commands

1. How Do I List All Available Packages?

To list all the available packages, type the following command.

$ apt-cache pkgnames

esseract-ocr-epo
pipenightdreams
mumudvb
tbb-examples
libsvm-java
libmrpt-hmtslam0.9
libboost-timer1.50-dev
kcm-touchpad
g++-4.5-multilib
...

2. How Do I Find Out Package Name and Description of Software?

To find out the package name and with it description before installing, use the ‘search‘ flag. Using “search” with apt-cache will display a list of matched packages with short description. Let’s say you would like to find out description of package ‘vsftpd‘, then command would be.

$ apt-cache search vsftpd

vsftpd - lightweight, efficient FTP server written for security
ccze - A robust, modular log coloriser
ftpd - File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server
yasat - simple stupid audit tool

To find and list down all the packages starting with ‘vsftpd‘, you could use the following command.

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